The Polish Medical Air Rescue has prepared procedures to be followed in the event of incidents with a large number of victims. According to the rescuers, there are no uniform rules of operation for the services involved in rescue operations in the event of mass incidents. The LPR’s proposals are intended to change that.
In June, LPR director Robert Gałązkowski appointed a team that developed procedures to be followed in the event of a mass event. As he informed in an interview with PAP, ready-made procedures were sent to the minister of health on Tuesday.
He explained that the main goal is to reduce the number of fatalities during events with a large number of casualties and to improve the functioning of the State Medical Rescue system, among others by systematizing the terminology and the manner of conduct of all persons and institutions participating in the rescue operation in case of mass events.
He added that there are currently no uniform procedures of this kind in the country. Some voivodes have guidelines for their voivodships in their action plans in the event of a mass incident.
The prepared procedures would cover medical dispatchers, the national LPR dispatcher, leaders of the operation of medical rescue operations, members of medical rescue teams, doctors and coordinators of medical rescue, hospital emergency departments and admission rooms, organizational units of hospitals specialized in the provision of health services necessary for medical rescue and voivodes .
Each of these people would fill out a special action card that would indicate step by step what should be done. In turn, voivodes would be obliged to organize a briefing and summarize the activities of the services during the rescue operation in the event of a mass incident within 72 hours after the incident.
The team suggested that the prepared procedures should be recommended by the National Consultant in the field of emergency medicine in the form of recommendations for action. Moreover, individual voivodes should update the voivodship action plans of the State Medical Rescue system, taking into account these procedures.
Gałązkowski added that the amendment to the Act on the State Medical Rescue should include a delegation for the minister to issue a notice on the standards of conduct in the event of a mass incident.
We also propose that the target model for the implementation of the developed procedures should be their reflection in an electronic version in the Polish-wide uniform program of the Command Support System for the State Medical Rescue, prepared by the Ministry of Administration and Digitization – said Gałązkowski.
According to the team, it is also necessary to standardize the radio code names of individual emergency medical teams. Freedom in the use of markings and assigning codenames by the dispatchers of teams causes repeated markings in the area of the same voivodeship, and often also in the area of two neighboring regions – explained the head of the LPR.
The team proposed rules for creating such markings. For example, each voivodship would be marked with a different code name, and its first letter would be included in the code denoting the team, so that on its basis it could be immediately identified which region a given team comes from.
In May, there was a collision on the S8 road in the town of Kowiesy on the lane towards Wrocław. 11 cars took part in it, including two trucks. Three people died, including a small child – Czech citizens. Medical assistance was provided to 25 injured people. Nine of them went to hospitals.
The media then published the content of the calls of the ambulance dispatcher with ambulance teams and pointed to the chaos between the emergency services. (PAP)